Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (The 5 Levels of Gifted 20 Year Study Results) Paperback – October 25, 2024

What is Giftedness?Do you ever wonder if you’d recognize it?How do we enable each gifted person to embark on a positive, authentic life trajectory that fosters their individual development?Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind explores how background experiences and opportunities during childhood shape the adult lives of the gifted children in 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2009) as they reach adulthood. Especially for the exceptionally and profoundly gifted children, the importance of a “good fit” in the home, community, and educational environment matters greatly and play a significant role in their futures.The book offers insight, as well as a practical metric - the Five Levels of Gifted - allowing readers to compare people of equal promise and differing levels of high ability as they progress on their educational paths. The book describes how deeply postsecondary and career choices diverge related to the gifted children's quality of good fit throughout their childhood years.Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (2024) is a detailed follow-up on 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2009). It is the first in a three-part series, based on The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023), which centered on the experiences and insights gained from a 20-year longitudinal study of client families. The author continues to revisit the grown-up gifted children of the initial study, offering unique, first person reports on how their lives and experiences have evolved over the two decades following the initial study.Re-edited and updated, each chapter now also contains Questions for Discussion, allowing readers to reflect on the insights gained.----------------------------------Dr. Ruf is a specialist in the field of exceptional and profound giftedness.As a seasoned parent, teacher, and educator, Dr. Ruf has written and spoken about school issues and the social and emotional adjustment of gifted children and adults whose needs differ from the majority of learners.She has a special interest in educational policy, seeking to establish educational environments which meet the social and emotional needs of gifted children and their peers. Read more